


What You Call A Monster

by ProbablyJozo



Series: The Land of Soktropica [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Deaf Character, Fighting, Gen, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:07:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22033786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyJozo/pseuds/ProbablyJozo
Summary: Dav (the rogue) and Pollux (the druid) spend the night hunting soulless. When the morning comes, one of them isn't in the best of places.
Relationships: Kai Davoren & Ethryn Pollux
Series: The Land of Soktropica [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1410877





	What You Call A Monster

**Author's Note:**

> These characters and some of the concepts haven't actually been introduced in the main story yet, but that's only because I haven't actually written chapter 3 yet. Because I'm lazy. So here's a oneshot of a moment I've had in my mind for a while.

The feeling of his blades running through untamed magic was something he would never get sick of.

With practiced ease, Dav sliced through the hoard, slashing through faux flesh and grabbing at the shards that fell from the monsters he vanquished. A spider to his left, a humanoid to his right; it was all part of his nightly routine. His job was to hunt the soulless and return the shards to his boss, who needed them for who knows what reason—and damn it, he was going to deliver, if only so he could eat the next day.

A lull in the fight allowed him to glance over at his accomplice; Pollux was knees deep in a swarm of creatures, batting them away with his favoured wooden pole and running the most dangerous ones through with the thorns growing on the end. As Dav watched, he swiped a hand through the air and pierced all of the soulless in front of him with sharp vines that shot up from the ground, giving him a path to clamber up one of the forest trees for a vantage point.

Pollux looked over to Dav then, before whipping out one of the knives he kept on him and chucking it in his direction. Dav ducked out of the way just in time to see the knife embed itself into a disfigured crab, which had been just about to tear into his arm. Acting quickly, he ran a blade through the stunned creature, finishing it off. As he scooped up the dropped shard, he looked back to Pollux.

“Bastard,” his friend signed, an unamused expression on his face, before gesturing to something behind him and focusing back on his own fight. Dav let out a chuckle as he spun and fended off another soulless. He knew that Pollux was really telling him to “watch your back and don’t get hurt, you bastard,” but in the middle of a fight, there wasn’t much time to talk.

He liked to think the name was said with endearment.

As his falchion pierced through another humanoid—a skeleton with six arms—he noticed the lighter hues of the sky. The soulless around him started to hiss, darting away into deeper and darker parts of the forest to escape the oncoming sunlight, and if he looked closely he could see the first hints of orange appearing through the trees.

He turned to point this out to Pollux, who had jumped back down from the tree, only to notice that the druid was surrounded by the last stubborn soulless who refused to run for refuge. He was clearly struggling, but just as Dav was about to rush over and help, he let out a growl and clawed through the crowd with arms armoured by bark and eyes blazing with fire. Then, with a broken yell, the remaining creatures fell to the ground, choked by vines and stabbed by thorns only brought about by Pollux’s druid blood.

And _that_ was a sight that Dav would never get sick of seeing.

“Hell yeah,” he muttered (mostly to himself because he knew that Pollux couldn’t hear him currently), picking up the remaining shards and pocketing them safely. Another night done and dusted—all they had to do now was drop off the shards, grab something to eat and go back to camp to rest.

As he turned to Pollux to get his attention, he froze.

The druid hadn’t moved from his place in the clearing, arms slowly changing back to normal and breathing heavy. He wasn’t looking at Dav but instead at the shard he was holding, other shards still scattered by his feet, disregarded.

Dav reached out to take the shard from him, simultaneously getting Pollux’s attention, and the druid snapped his head up once he noticed him in front of him. For a moment, they looked at each other in silence.

“Dav,” Pollux said out loud, which was weird because there weren’t vines grown around his ears, so he definitely couldn’t hear anything. “Dav. Dav. Dav, Dav, _Dav_.”

“Yes?” Dav signed, slightly confused. He had no clue what was going on, so he only watched as the druid stopped babbling, hands shaking and gaze cast down. Quiet sniffles could be heard from him, but it was only when Pollux’s breath hitched that Dav realised he was crying.

“Pollux?” The druid wasn’t looking at Dav anymore so he didn’t notice the sign, continuing to curl in on himself as he hiccuped and tried not to sob. Sighing, and still not understanding what was happening, Dav slowly reached forwards and touched his arm, causing him to look at him. Then, Dav opened his arms, his eyes worried but inviting, and immediately Pollux rushed forwards and hugged him, sobbing onto his shoulder.

They stayed like that for a while.

When Pollux eventually seemed to calm down, Dav gently pulled away and brought his hands in front of him.

“OK?” he signed, and Pollux nodded tiredly. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” Pollux’s hands faltered, and he couldn’t look Dav in the face as he stuttered. “You…”

“Is it because I almost got hurt?” Dav asked. “I’m alright. Don’t worry.”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Pollux still took a moment, scanning Dav’s face for something, before he answered. “You saw me. I’m a monster.”

“...What?”

The druid stared at him tiredly. “I can do so much damage. I was killing everything around me. I’m a monster.”

“No…” Dav replied, shaking his head vehemently. Pollux kept going.

“I just clawed my way through them, I strangled them, stabbed them, I killed them all—”

“No!” Dav exclaimed, shouting as he signed. Pollux’s breath hitched as he stopped rambling. “No, you’re not a monster. The soulless can’t feel anything, they could have hurt others. I know you would never hurt someone else on purpose.” He took a moment to wipe away a tear that had rolled down Pollux’s cheek. “You’re not a monster. Trust me, Pollux.”

Pollux nodded, although he didn’t look like he entirely believed it, but he didn’t say anything else. Dav could tell how tired he was from his silence. “Let’s go home, alright? You look like you need a rest.”

Again, without saying anything, Pollux nodded in agreement, but he didn’t make any move to start walking. Instead, he slowly leaned onto Dav, and once again the rogue wrapped his arms gently around his friend.

“You’re okay,” Dav whispered out loud, even though he knew Pollux couldn’t hear him. “You could never be a monster to me.”


End file.
